Nanosecrets of Everyday Things

prostoalex writes "A recent issue of Berkeley Lab Research Review discusses the nanosecrets of everyday things. The article talks about common everyday applications of nanotechnology advances, as well as takes a look at tools used to manipulate itty-bitty widgets."

Comments

Blob?

[YanceyAI]

Often these transmission electron microscope images have a "bubble-raft" appearance, in which ordered arrays of little round blobs encounter other arrays oriented differently. Each blob represents a column of atoms; seen from a different angle, the spacing and orientation of the columns gives a different picture, although at some angles the atoms are too close together to resolve. (Emphasis mine)

Is that the super-technical scientific use of the word blob, or do they just mean, you know, blob?

Re:Blob?

[regen]

The technical meaning of blob is Binary Large OBject. It turns out that at a small enough level the universe appears to be a database.

Firm grasp of the obvious

[Bearpaw]

"If we are going to achieve real nanotechnology, we are going to have to learn how to put atoms together one at a time." (Miquel Salmeron)

Uh, yeah, that's what nanotechnology means. Or what it used to mean anyway, before it started getting watered down by lame science fiction and people using it for buzzword effect.

Re:Firm grasp of the obvious

[jacoberrol]

You are confusing nanotechnology with positional assembly

Assembling things one atom at a time is one way to accomplish nanotechnology, but it would be incorrect to assume it is the only way.

Re:Firm grasp of the obvious

[iabervon]

That's not entirely true; the ideal way to do nanotechnology might be to probabilistically arrange groups of atoms into a limited set of arrangements and filter out the undesired ones.

For some applications, you probably actually do want to build your structures exactly and atom-by-atom. But other applications are best suited to a set of catalysts that will construct a random variant of the structure, so long as it has the property you want, or which will only sometimes construct the right thing, but everything else will be destroyed by another catalyst. For that matter, the most successful method has been to put together reasonably large molecules which are built separately.

For that matter, depending on what you're making, you may be perfectly happy with a couple of the desired molecules and a lot of innocuous failures. The failures then are basically packing material (you're not going to deliver someone a single molecule; you're going to deliver a manageable volume of uninteresting solution with an interesting molecule in it).

I didn't know....

[I_am_Rambi]

"'If you're going to manipulate small things, you need small tools,' says Keith Jackson....Jackson, a physicist in the Materials Sciences Division's Center for X-Ray Optics"

It took a Physicist to figure that out? I thought little kids can figure that out. I am glad to learn the obvious from a physicist.

Eric Drexler ???

[zebadee]

Meg Ryan in the film Innerspace(1987)started the nano-craze for me!

the slippery slope of scientific serials.

[budalite]

Reading this what-probably-is-a-very-informative article reminds me of the very interesting-looking articles in Scientific American. The first page and about a half of each article is very readable and understandable. Then, all of a sudden, like a Harold LLoyd character (the guy hanging from the way-high-up clock face) stepping from a 3" mudpuddle into a 7' mudpuddle, I find myself so far in over my head so fast that I read another half page before I even realize I have no clue what the fsck I have reading. Like the chicken running around after it has been relieved of its head (another childhood image I will never get out of my head. :P ), I have been reading just because my eyes are still moving. My brain disengaged paragraphs earlier. Whew. I want to be able to understand this sort of stuff in my next life, if there is such a thing... Go, team!

Gray goo

[halftrack]

Not all foresee nanotech as something good. Just take a look at this page where some half nutty, half sensible people want to build lifeboats/arks in space so that they can escape from the 'gray goo.'

Re:Gray goo

[Dirtside]

If you're feeling a little too paranoid, check out this link, where the threat of gray (or black) goo is analyzed a bit. It's not as bad as you think; blue goo should be able to protect us ;)

(Quick reference:

gray goo = accidentally released nanobots that eat everything
black goo = deliberately released nanobots that eat everything
blue goo = counter-nanobots that prevent gray/black goo from eating everything)

Great, tinier junk!

[decipher_saint]

Here are my questions about nanotech:

Where do all the obsolete nanites go? Will they be biodegradable, if so at what rate?

How tightly would medical nanites be controlled, sold?

How can we detect nanomachines to protect against potential dangers to ourselves or our nations?

If something like the "Andromeda Strain" did occur, how would we combat it?

I realize a lot of these questions are unanswerable, but I'm still curious.